The Project Gutenberg EBook of Skilled Assistance, by W.W. Jacobs

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Title: Skilled Assistance
Ship's Company, Part 9.

Author: W.W. Jacobs

Release Date: January 1, 2004 [EBook #10569]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SKILLED ASSISTANCE ***

Produced by David Widger

SHIP'S COMPANY

By W.W. Jacobs

[Illustration: 'I tell you, I am as innercent as a new-born babe'.]

SKILLED ASSISTANCE

The night-watchman, who had left his seat on the jetty to answer the
gate-bell, came back with disgust written on a countenance only too well
designed to express it.

"If she's been up 'ere once in the last week to, know whether the
<i>Silvia</i> is up she's been four or five times," he growled. "He's forty-
seven if he's a day; 'is left leg is shorter than 'is right, and he talks
with a stutter. When she's with 'im you'd think as butter wouldn't melt
in 'er mouth; but the way she talked to me just now you'd think I was
paid a-purpose to wait on her. I asked 'er at last wot she thought I was
here for, and she said she didn't know, and nobody else neither. And
afore she went off she told the potman from the 'Albion,' wot was
listening, that I was known all over Wapping as the Sleeping Beauty.

"She ain't the fust I've 'ad words with, not by a lot. They're all the
same; they all start in a nice, kind, soapy sort o' way, and, as soon as
they don't get wot they want, fly into a temper and ask me who, I think I
am. I told one woman once not to be silly, and I shall never forget it
as long as I live-never. For all I know, she's wearing a bit o' my 'air
in a locket to this day, and very likely boasting that I gave it to her.

"Talking of her reminds me of another woman. There was a Cap'n Pinner,
used to trade between 'ere and Hull on a schooner named the Snipe. Nice
little craft she was, and 'e was a very nice feller. Many and many's the
pint we've 'ad together, turn and turn-about, and the on'y time we ever
'ad a cross word was when somebody hid his clay pipe in my beer and 'e
was foolish enough to think I'd done it.

"He 'ad a nice little cottage, 'e told me about, near Hull, and '